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Comment by xienze | Hacker News Reader

Yeah that's my biggest beef with the Paris Agreement. If it's about the global environment, why are all countries not compelled to participate equally? Don't let China off the hook and I think a lot of people would be less skeptical of the whole arrangement.

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Realistically, poorer countries are going to be able to do almost nothing to help the global situation. The understanding is that richer countries (who, to be fair, have done the majority of polluting historically) will have to grant enormous subsidies to effect change in developing countries if we're going to meet international climate goals.

I guess that's a difficult pill to swallow if you espouse nationalist economic policies, but this isn't about Us vs. Them; we're talking about preventing massive devastation on a global scale. And the Paris accord was just the first step. We'll need to spend much more than Trump is already unwilling to pay if we want to avert disaster.

We're calling China and India poor countries now? In relation to the US every country is poor. But as you stated, it's a global problem. It needs a global solution. Pollute less! Hold everyone to the same standard.

One-size-fits-all policy proposals rarely succeed because they don't take account of historical and political realities. Your comments remind me of developers to treat user requests/complaints as problematic because they're so in love with their code base that they've forgotten that software is meant to serve the needs of the people who use it.

What would you call them? Yes, they're poor [0].

United States $57,436

China $8,113

India $1,723

It's easy to say that everyone should be held to the same standard when you're already the richest. The US uses 7032 kg of oil equivalent/capita, China 2029 kg/capita, India 614 kg/capita [1]. If you really want to hold everyone to the same standard you could cut your energy use by an order of magnitude and still use more than India. It's ridiculous to hear an american president try to paint developing countries as energy thirsty when the three most sold vehicles in the US are pickup trucks while most people in China and India can't afford any kind of car [2].

Like you said, it's a global problem. It won't be solved by whining about "unfair" economic terms and bragging about opening more coal mines.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/best-selling-cars-trucks-vehi...

We have poor People, country itself is quite rich. Both of them are top ten in military spending.

"The law, in its majesty, forbids the poor and the rich equally from sleeping under bridges."

A couple thoughts - what is equally? The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin[1]. And last I checked, a vast majority of people support the agreement[2], including half of trump supporters.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countrie... [2] http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/paris_agre...

> The US is the historically the largest contributor of greenhouse gases by a wide margin

Sure, but guess what: China is right behind us. History means squat. They're a major polluter _right now_. Why are they not held to the same standard we are?

They could ask the same question - why is the US allowed to have higher per-capita emissions?

Why are per-capita emissions a more important number than net emissions? With the former, China is behind us (roughly half) whereas with the latter, they're roughly double based on the current Wikipedia numbers.

I'm not saying they're more important.

But as for why they are important, I think that there is some relationship between how people live and per-capita emissions. So if you ignore the population size and only look at net emissions, the people in larger countries would be held to a higher standard than the people in the smaller countries.

They're not held to the same standard because if they were, they would rightfull refuse to sign on:

China's GDP was 10.87 trillion USD in 2015 vs 17.95 trillion USD for the US. GDP per capita was 7,926 in 2015 vs 55,836 in the US. China is still a poor country.

When China reaches a comparable GDP per capita, then we can expect comparable cuts to be on the table.

Until then expecting sharp cuts from developing countries will not be a viable alternative.

China has a a few hundred thousand metric tons before they are close to the historical pollution we have contributed. And last I checked, they are still committed to taking action[1]... if only we could say the same.

Things I've learned in life(mostly the hard way) include that fair is not a thing and does not exist.

[1]https://www.c2es.org/international/key-country-policies/chin...

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